For Me, Teaching at HSE Is a Continuous Process of Learning and Self-Development
There are quite a few HSE graduates among HSE’s faculty. Four employees of the HSE Innovations Management Department are former and current students of the Department’s Master’s programme in ‘Corporate Research, Development and Innovation Management’. HSE News Service spoke with them to find out why they are working at their alma mater, what teaching means to them, and what they like about their students.
Yury Kardonov, guest lecturer and doctoral student, Innovations Management Department
I received my Master’s degree from HSE in 2020. I have been working at the university for six months, since September. I’m teaching practical skills for building startups (the minor course, ‘Start-Up from Scratch: Practice of Creating Your Own Business’). Most of my students’ teams are currently making their first sales and launching their pilot projects.
All the students in this minor course are taking it because they want to create their own startups rather than just study, which is inspiring
I discuss with my students marketing basics, management techniques, product analysis, legal aspects, and strategic management.
I was invited to teach at the Innovations Management Department by Professor Margarita Zobnina, whom I deeply respect. I was eager to share with my students the experience I had gained over four years of managing Arteo.tech, my own company operating in the field of neurotechnologies and virtual reality. My job at the Innovations Management Department is not my first teaching experience as I am cooperating with the Corporate University of Sberbank. I’m also one of the top managers of a groundbreaking social network which we are going to launch soon.
Olga Suvorova, lecturer, Innovations Management Department
I’m currently writing my graduation thesis and will soon receive my Master’s degree at the HSE University. I joined the Department as a teacher in November 2019. I started by teaching practical skills and seminars for the minor course, ‘Start-Up from Scratch: Practice of Creating Your Own Business’. A couple of months later, I went on to teaching the minor course, ‘Corporate Entrepreneurship’.
I took to education thanks to my mother, who has been a high school physics teacher for over 30 years. Before working at the Department, I’d already had some experience in teaching design mindset and giving lectures about startups and technologies. I have launched some university and online courses as a methodologist. I wanted to pursue a career in teaching, so when the Department invited me to work there as a teacher I jumped at the opportunity.
For me, teaching at HSE is a continuous process of learning and self-development. We look for new cases and materials for our classes while trying out various methods of how to deliver knowledge and skills to students. Teaching gives me enormous opportunities for growth and self-education.
Ural Ibragimov, Associate Professor, Innovations Management Department
I began teaching at the Department in September 2019 when I taught the minor course, ‘Startup from Scratch: Practice of Creating Your Own Business’. In November, I joined the teachers’ team led by Sergey Titov, Professor of the Innovations Management Department. In 2020, our team and the HSE Business Incubator launched the optional course ‘Startup School of HSE Business Incubator’, which was awarded ‘the most helpful course of the year to broaden students’ minds and contribute to their all-round development.’ This year I will graduate from HSE University with a Master’s degree.
I’ve been teaching at the university level for 25 years. My students help me learn new unique things and stay abreast of what is going on in the world of youth. I’m very pleased to share my knowledge and skills in business with students to contribute to the success of their projects. I decided to work for the Innovation Management Department because it is at the forefront of the knowledge and innovations, and it serves as the basis for a modern career trajectory. An advantage of the Department is that it provides an opportunity to network with mature and ambitious Master’s students, while engaging a professional team of colleagues, all of whom are willing to support your ideas.
Anna Solodikhina, senior lecturer, Innovations Management Department
I graduated from the Department with a Master’s degree in 2020. In the meantime, I also studied in the continuing professional development programme ‘Entrepreneurial Mindset and Support of Students’ Entrepreneurial Initiatives’. HSE programmes of continuing professional development and other training courses are important for me, not only because their content is useful, but also because they give you a chance to meet very interesting people and share your experience with colleagues.
About a month after I began pursuing my Master’s degree, I was invited to work as a team curator and teach a few practical classes for the ‘Corporate Entrepreneurship’ minor. Soon after that, I was invited to take up a special course and try myself as a tracker (a mentor of students’ business projects) for the minor course, ‘Startup from Scratch: Practice of Creating Your Own Business’. I worked as a curator and a tracker until the end of the academic year, and the following year I was offered to hold my own seminars and practical courses in entrepreneurship for second- and third-year students.
I am currently head of the project ‘School of Entrepreneurship’ at the HSE Lyceum. This project engages more than 25 students who help implement the programme as trackers. My job at the Innovation Management Department involves teaching the ‘Design Mindset’ course, the Technological Marketing magolego, and classes of the Startup School of HSE Business Incubator. I am also the author and manager of Techno-Startup, Russia’s first chemical technopark for children, created jointly by the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia and the HSE Innovations management Department. Over 70 pupils and 20 university students completed the first course, and we are planning to launch new courses in spring!
My goal is to continuously improve, deepen, and expand the programmes that I have designed
I’ve been keen on technology inventions since I was in secondary school when I used to participated in various competitions. However, it is only now that I have realized the importance and significance of innovations.
For me, teaching is not just delivering knowledge and sharing experience with pupils and students. The principle I rely on in teaching is: Don’t teach any theory that you haven’t personally used in practice. I always study a vast amount of various information, including some contradictory data, carry out experiments, and analyze the results until I get to the bottom of things and draw my own conclusions about each aspect. Another crucial aspect of teaching is how you can present the information, which is no less important than what you are going to tell your students (the content itself). Therefore, I try out non-standard interactive teaching methods, making up interactive games to make my classes more than just interesting, but also exciting and motivating.